1955 Chevy Bel Air - the acquisition

When I decided to look for a project car to restore, I really wanted to keep the cost of acquiring the car to less than $2,000.  I knew any car in this price range would require a lot of work, but I was ambitious; ready to learn everything about building a car from the ground up.  I got my wish.

For a few weeks, I looked at several web sites for a restoration project.  A simple Google search found an abundance of online auction sites, and of course, there was always eBay.  I had even submitted a few bids – some of them ridiculously low – knowing that it was unrealistic for mine to be the winning bid.  I even put in a bid for a tractor in Arizona that was in great shape for being a mid-1930s model.  It ended up going for less than $600, but even before the auction had ended, I had decided that I would prefer to spend my time working on a car rather than a tractor.  And, since I don’t have a farm, it just made more sense.  I was still in for many challenges, however, living in a two-bedroom apartment. 

Then one day I saw a posting on eBay for a 1955 4-door Chevy Bel Air, with a Buy-it-now price of $1,200.  I didn’t pay it a lot of attention because there was only one picture, and it was poor quality.  From what I could tell in the picture, however, it did appear that all the major body components were intact, and the description listed it as having “everything original”, including the engine and the transmission.  I just glanced over the posting, but I included it in my “watch” list, just to see what it would eventually sell for. 

Later that day, it was bugging me.  What if this was the opportunity I had been waiting for?  Given the prices of some of the Tri-Five models (that’s the term collectors use for the 1955, 56, and 57 Chevy models), this one was definitely in my price range, and it was in Tennessee, and not Oregon or Vermont, or somewhere that was beyond practical reach.  Getting the car would be quite a trip from Frisco, Texas, but very do-able over a weekend.

 
I picked up the phone and called the number on the eBay posting.  I requested some more pictures and any additional information the seller could provide.  I found out that the car had belonged to an elderly lady who had parked the car under a tree sometime after her husband had passed away, and the car sat parked in the same spot for 30 years.  Sketchy on the details, but the few additional photographs that I saw the next day was enough to really make me seriously think about taking a chance on this one.  It was a 4-door model, and I really preferred the 2-door model, but I decided to roll the dice and make this car my project.

Loading the car onto my trailer

I left Frisco at 3:30am on Saturday, January 21^st in my Ford F-250 diesel truck with a rented U-Haul auto-transport trailer.  I arrived at the seller’s house in Manchester, TN at 3:45pm that afternoon; twelve hours on the road with only two stops to fuel up.  My excitement about seeing and getting the car had kept me awake.  The car was on a flatbed trailer, and it had four very flat tires.  The rubber on the tires was dry rotted and hardened, and it was clear that this car was simply NOT going to roll any time soon.  In the end, I backed up my rented U-Haul trailer to the back end of the flatbed trailer, and used a winch to slide the car off the flatbed onto my trailer.  It actually went fairly smooth.  The car was sitting on my trailer backwards, but I didn’t think that would be an issue, and as it turns out, it wasn’t.  The rain that had fallen earlier made it a bit easier to slide the car from one trailer to the other.  Soon, I was on my way headed west again.  By this time it was dark.  After another four hours on the road, I was ready for a break.  I stopped at a hotel in Memphis to catch a few hours of sleep before continuing my trip home. 




Made it home to Frisco, TX

I was back on the road again Sunday morning at 6:00am.  When I arrived at our apartment around two in the afternoon, my wife, Julie was…how can I say it?…less than excited…to see it.  My 14-year-old son, Sam, however, seemed curious, but unsure of what his dad had done.  I will admit, it was quite an eye sore with all the rust and broken-out windows.  But where they saw rust, I saw potential.  Where they saw problems, I saw opportunity.  I had to keep telling myself that, because when I would stand back and look at it, it was hard to imagine that this thing was not going to end up in a crusher.